Frédéric was the fifth child of Jean and Marie Ozanam; though born in Milan, on April 23, 1813, he was raised in Lyon, his family's home for centuries. After a brief period of doubt as a youth, Frédéric was aflame with the Faith, writing pamphlets from a young age and supporting missionaries. He studied in law in Paris and became good friends with André-Marie Ampère, the famous physicist of electromagnetism. As a student, with friends, he began a discussion group of various topics in the humanities, but the focus became the social teachings of the Gospel. Inspired by this group, Frédéric founded the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1833.
While working to help the poor and grow the Society, he also worked as a lawyer, becoming Doctor of Laws in 1836; however, he preferred literature, so he obtained the Doctor of Letters in 1939 with a thesis on Dante. In 1840, he became a professor of literature at the Sorbonne, focusing on medieval German literature. He married Amélie Soulacroix in June 1841, and the couple had a daughter, Marie. Frédéric always had a weak constitution, and, after spending his life writing, teaching, and assisting the poor, he died of consumption on September 8, 1853, at the age of 40. He was later beatified by Pope St. John Paul II on August 22, 1997; his feast day is September 9.
Frédéric's works include various political and legal writings, a book on Dante and Catholic philosophy, a two-volume study of German literature, a translation and commentary on Dante's Purgatorio, a study of 13th-century Italian Franciscan poets, and a host of smaller works. The below excerpts come from two talks he gave to Italian Conferences of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul; the first two paragraphs are from a discourse in Livorno on May 1, 1853, while the remainder is from a discourse in Florence on January 30, 1853.
Our Conferences are occupied with the most interesting of modern questions. Regarding the bearing of a beneficent hand as a right, they strive to quench the fatal resentments of the poor against the rich and to hinder society from dividing into two camps, those who have and those who have not. The same as before, in your Italy, when implacable factions bloodied the most beautiful cities, one saw a Father John of Vicenza, a Saint Bernardino of Sienna, [1] going out, crucifix in hand, against the combatants, to proclaim peace and reconcile hostile parties; the same, today, the members of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, since their weakness does not permit them to compare themselves to similar heroes, animated, however, by the same spirit, make their efforts to advance this great work of a universal conciliation.
In your vast and flourishing city, there are certainly rich men who have neither the facility nor the time to go in person to help the poor. Go to them and tell them: “If you cannot yourselves visit the indigent in his dwelling, if it is impossible for you to help him personally, behold us, ready to charge ourselves with this mission; we will hold the honor of being, for a time, your ambassadors, the purveyors of the poor, the servants of Jesus Christ, of Jesus Christ, God of the poor and of the rich, the greatest of the rich, since He is this by His nature, the holiest of the poor, since He is this by His will.” You, then, put yourselves under the roof of the indigent, and, after having sweetened his insupportable miseries by your own alms and by those of another, depart from his dwelling, a messenger of peace, reporting, as once the dove of the ark did, a sign of a new alliance, the green branch of the olive.
O my friends, my Confreres! conserve and propagate this spirit of Christian fraternity, which is the base of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul: pursue, with perseverance, the noble end which it proposes, of keeping yourselves firm in your faith and of helping others to share it with you.
Do not believe, moreover, that regarding charity as a means of conserving the faith is to lessen this sublime virtue. On the contrary, it will magnify it in us: we learn, in visiting the poor, that we gain more than he, since the spectacle of his misery will serve to render us better. We feel, then, for these unfortunates, such a sentiment of recognition, that we cannot stop ourselves from loving them. Oh! how many times I myself, overwhelmed by some interior pain, disquieted by my ill-strengthened health, entered, full of sadness, into the dwelling of a poor man confided to my cares, and there, at the sight of such misfortunes, more to wept at than myself, I reproached myself for my discouragement, I felt myself stronger against sorrow, and I gave thanks to that unhappy one who had consoled and fortified me through the glimpse of his own miseries! And how, then, will I not now love him more?
Let us be persuaded, my friends, these are the prodigies of Christian charity. Purely philanthropic societies do not have these elements of force and of duration, since they are founded on nothing but purely human interests. One sees silver scattered, but one does not feel the heart battered. This charity, which mixes its tears with the tears of the unhappy ones whom it cannot console otherwise, which caresses and gathers the nude and abandoned child, which bears the counsels of friendship to timid youth, which assists, with benevolence, at the bed of the ill, which listens, without giving a sign of boredom, to the long and lamentable accounts of misfortune…this charity, O my friends! can be inspired by no one but God.
You have no need of hearing me explain in which the spirit of our association consists, since it fills your heart. But, finding myself in the midst of you, it is, for me, a need and a duty to address these words to you; I hoped that you would receive them as beloved traditions and as family souvenirs.
Footnotes: [1] Bl. John of Vicenza (1200 – c. 1260) was a Dominican preacher well-known for his work of mediation. St. Bernardino of Siena (9/8/1380-5/20/1444) was a Franciscan preacher who also work to reconcile opponents; he also devised the symbol of the letters IHS inside a sun, later adopted by the Jesuits.
Source: Œuvres Complètes de A.F.-Ozanam, 4th ed., Tome 8, Mélanges II (Paris: Libraire Jacques Lecoffre, 1872), 77-79, 55-59.